


One Day's Dusk

by onstraysod



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, One Shot, Outdoor Sex, Pining, Reunion Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 07:06:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17803328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onstraysod/pseuds/onstraysod
Summary: Edward Little has survived the Franklin Expedition, returned to England, and retired from the Navy. But the only thing that can make him happy is the one thing he doesn't have.





	One Day's Dusk

**Author's Note:**

  * For [boniface](https://archiveofourown.org/users/boniface/gifts).



> Love, unconquerable,  
> Waster of rich men, keeper  
> Of warm lights and all-night vigil  
> In the soft face of a girl:  
> Sea-wanderer, forest-visitor!  
> Even the pure immortals cannot escape you,  
> And mortal man, in his one day's dusk,  
> Trembles before your glory.
> 
>  - Sophocles

He was done with the Navy, but the water remained in his blood. The smell of it, weight of it, the way it broke across his skin: it was a perpetual longing, tugging at him even in dreams. Once it could only be satisfied by riding the waves, but now he found he could satiate himself in less perilous ways. The pond at the base of the knoll on which he sat lacked the tang of salt, and its surface barely stirred beneath the soft summer breeze, but it gleamed where the sun touched it, just as the ocean did, and it beckoned him to immerse himself in its wet depths like a comely siren, the same way the sea cajoled and tempted.

Yet Edward resisted its song. He was content to sit on its bank, leaning back against the trunk of an old oak, sketchbook propped against his thigh. The days of never feeling warm enough despite layers of broadcloth were mercifully past: even the temperate English summer felt tropical in comparison to those times, and he had gone out that afternoon without jacket or waistcoat, rolled his sleeves up to the elbows and left the first few buttons of his shirt loose. It was a day of clear skies and bright sun, and he was alive to see it, something he’d come very close to not being. 

By all rights, he should have been happy. 

He had been working to capture the scene before him for several days, walking down from the house each afternoon to sit for hours, letting his thoughts drift as his hand moved pencil across page. When the sketch was completed, depending on its quality, he thought he’d make a gift of it to Crozier in appreciation for his hospitality of the past two weeks.

He’d heard the grumbling during obligatory visits to the Admiralty. Why hadn’t Crozier taken a house in his native Ireland? Those well-disposed to Sir Francis - his long-delayed knighthood begrudgingly awarded the previous month - murmured about nearness to the capital, a possible presidency of the Royal Geographical Society. Those less well disposed spread rumors about a contract with John Murray for a tell-all memoir, one that would place the blame for the fiasco of the expedition on Samuel Goldner and - by extension - the Lords of the Admiralty themselves.

The real reason was more complicated, and more scandalous, than either faction seemed capable of imagining. During the two weeks of Edward’s stay, James Fitzjames had also been in residence for at least half that time. Though the men gave no outward evidence in Edward’s presence of the true nature of their relationship, only a fool could have mistaken it. In every glance exchanged, every surreptitious touch, an intimacy deeper than friendship was betrayed. Edward was neither shocked nor disappointed: there had been ample signs of the development during the tortuous journey back, and as far as he was concerned, the two captains had earned every bit of happiness they had found in one another. More selfishly, it came as an immense relief, making Edward feel less a hypocrite for his own behavior.

But whenever it was just the three of them together in a room, Edward found some excuse to flee. Each time Crozier’s and Fitzjames’s eyes met, there was an exchange of secret knowledge, of private jests unshared with any other living soul. Their fingers overlapped when teacups were passed across the table, their hands lingered on arm or shoulder as they walked from dining room to den, and each gesture battered against Edward’s heart like ice against the hull of a ship. It wasn’t as if he needed a reminder of all he’d once had and lost: he tormented himself with it constantly. Watching the joy of two other men spill over in their laughter and looks was something even Edward’s stoicism could not long endure. So he excused himself as frequently as he could, going off to the pond to sketch, until it became both a habit and a necessity, even during Fitzjames’s rare absences.

Crozier had told Edward he’d taken the house in the country for a refuge, a retirement from the demands of society and the Navy. But if he would not go to society, it seemed society - and the Navy - was intent on coming to him. Since Edward’s arrival, Crozier’s house had been a constant whirlwind of visitors and messages. Le Vesconte and Goodsir had been to dine twice; Sir James Ross had spent one night, and Blanky had stayed for several days, filling the halls with his pipe smoke and laughter and the _stump-stump-stump_ of his new wooden leg. The surviving crew members who hadn’t been to visit had sent messages, a new pile of letters and telegrams waiting for Crozier’s inspection every afternoon. But of the one crew mate Edward most longed and dreaded to hear, there’d been no word. Not so much as a syllable of his name had left Crozier’s lips, and Edward could not speak it.

On the second Monday of his stay, however, while Fitzjames was away in the city, Edward entered the drawing room to join Crozier for tea and found him perusing a letter, a bright smile on his lips.

“Ah, Edward! Here’s a letter you’ll find interesting. It’s from Jopson.”

It was a near run thing: he’d been just about to lift his teacup, and the sound of shattering china rang in his ears even as the accident was averted. Heart leaping in his chest, Edward let the teacup sit and put both his hands in his lap instead, gripping them together so hard his fingers ached. He didn’t trust himself not to betray what the mere mention of Jopson’s name had done to him. 

“Indeed?”

“Yes. He’s in London. He’s taken a set of rooms in Hackney. Found a good job, too.”

“In service?”

“No, he’s a clerk. I recommended him for the position. After all the logistics of keeping track of stores and planning menus, I knew he was suited for it.”

Edward swallowed. “And-- he’s well?”

“Very well.” Crozier glanced up at him. “Should I send him your regards in my reply?”

“I don’t think that’s necessary. He wrote hoping to hear back from you, not from me. Besides, I doubt Jopson cares enough about me to accept my regards.” The words tasted like poison on his tongue.

“Indeed? Well, in that case, it’s most odd that he asked after you so particularly.”

Edward’s head came up with an almost audible snap. “He asked about me?”

Keeping his expression even, Crozier nodded. Picking up the letter again, he traced his finger down the page until he found a particular passage, then began to read aloud. “ _I have had the good fortune to encounter many of our fellow shipmates and to learn the whereabouts of others, but I have not heard anything concerning Lieutenant Little. Have you, by any chance, been in contact with him, or do you know where he resides now and how he fares? I should be glad to hear something of him, if you are acquainted with such information._ ”

Edward sat very still, wondering if the racket his heart was making was audible to Crozier at the other end of the table. He fought with all the self-control he possessed to keep the emotion from his face and voice when he spoke.

“That was kind of him.”

Crozier folded the letter up again. “You should call upon him the next time you’re in the city.” The captain gave him a small, bland smile as he made this suggestion, and began busying himself with the tea.

Edward studied the pattern in the tablecloth. “I wouldn’t wish to go where I might not be welcome.”

“Edward, I hardly think Thomas would have asked after you if he had no wish of ever seeing you again.” Crozier watched him closely, waiting for a reply, but hope and fear were warring so violently inside of Edward that he’d lost the ability to speak. “Well, give it some thought. But don’t wait too long. We’re all beginning to move on with our lives, and you and I both know how special Thomas is.” The note of warning in Francis’s voice was clear, and it froze Edward to the marrow. “He won’t want for new friends for long.”

Edward spent the next days in a chaos of emotion, pulled between the extremes of optimism and despair like a rag doll in the teeth of two vying dogs. He had lain awake for hours, mentally enacting every possible scenario for a reunion with Jopson, drifting to sleep in the midst of his imaginings only to wake in a cold, sickly sweat from a nightmare in which Jopson had slammed the door closed in his face. He had started at least a dozen letters to his former lover, inquiring in the stiffest language if they might meet for tea, only to discard each sheet of paper, his words inadequate, his handwriting so shaky it resembled that of a man stricken with palsy.

In the end, paralyzed by indecision, he’d done nothing, each afternoon escaping from his tortured thoughts - and what he imagined were Crozier’s reproachful looks - by walking down to the pond and losing himself in sketching. It had been a comfort to him during his years at the Naval Academy, when the pangs of homesickness had been eased by the depiction of familiar faces and scenes, gaining in skill as his loneliness lessened. At sea in later years, it had served as a temporary break from tyrannical captains and fractious crews. Holding the pencil steady in his fingers, relaxing his body so his hand remained loose against the paper, Edward let his pent-up emotions flow out with every line, every cross-hatched shadow, until a measure of equilibrium returned to the tempest-tossed sea inside him.

Yet there was ever an undercurrent, a rip tide threatening to leave him stranded in the depths of memory, and it was stronger than any anchor he could devise. Sometimes it surged against him with such power that he could only pause in his work and surrender himself up to it, body and mind.

Closing the sketchpad and laying it aside, Edward fell back upon the grass and closed his eyes. He could feel when the breeze shifted the leaves over his head, the sunlight tumbling down to run its warm fingers over his body and face. Sliding his hands beneath his head, Edward let his thoughts drift where they would, following whatever errant path they chose as a restful state of half-sleep began to overpower him.

And as usual, his thoughts charted a course back to Thomas. Back to that paradise in the midst of the ice, the warm oasis of caresses, of tender lips and bodies in a harmony of motion. Back to the new world they’d created together beneath the wool blankets in his bunk, a world that knew no coldness or want. A world of whispered urgings and shared hopes, and the kind of passion Edward hadn’t thought existed outside of shilling novels.

Thomas was in his arms again: if not in reality, at least in imagination. The hurt and bitterness of their parting washed away like flotsam, and an unbroken sea of bliss stretched out before him instead. But the rolling pressure of its surf was the weight of Thomas’s body, atop and beneath him, and the theft of his breath and shaking of his limbs came not from drowning but from the sweet rush of release. Edward lost himself so completely in his fantasy that everything in the atmosphere around him melded with his memories, transporting him physically back to the happiest moments he’d known. Thus the ripples of the pond became the open waters of Davis Strait, lapping against the hull, when on deck one evening he’d found Jopson at the gunwale beside him, and felt his heart stir as the steward’s eyes met his. The rustling of the oak leaves sounded eerily like fabric, and they became the clothing shed upon the boards of his cabin, the tugging of shirttails from trousers and the scrabbling of fingers over wool. The rhythm of his own heartbeat became soft footfalls, the careful tread he’d lain awake in his bunk every night waiting to hear, the first whisper of it to reach his ears always setting his body aflame.

The images conjured against his closed eyelids were so intense that Edward began to fancy he could feel Thomas’s physical presence. The other man’s nearness was palpable as Edward imagined him leaning down, warmth radiating from his skin. His nostrils filled with the clean scent of the former steward, soap mixed with traces of bergamot or rose water; his cheek was gently caressed by slender, nimble fingers, a touch so achingly familiar it made him want to weep. Then he felt Jopson’s lips, pressing soft but urgent against his brow: somehow, from the depths of his mind, he’d conjured them perfectly, their texture, their shape, the way they parted infinitesimally at the end of the kiss, a teasing invitation. Jopson’s kiss moved to the tip of his nose, then to his mouth, and lost in his reverie Edward returned it, pushing against the phantom lips that felt so real against his own until they opened to him, and he tasted Thomas - _his Thomas_ \- as intoxicating to his every sense as the strongest, rarest wine.

“Thomas.” He murmured the name aloud, unashamed of his abandon.

“I’m here.” So full was the fantasy that Edward heard the response, the memory of Jopson’s voice making the breath catch in his throat.

“You wouldn’t come to London, you stubborn man, so I’ve come to you.”

This was too much even for Edward’s fertile imagination. Eyes flying open, head swimming with a vertigo of disbelief, he saw Thomas Jopson sitting on the grass at his side and leaning partially over him, a fond smile on his face.

“Thomas?” Edward pulled himself upright, staring at the other man as if at any moment he might dissolve into mist. There were dozens of old stories - Edward remembered hearing them while still in the nursery - of the fair folk ensnaring Englishmen and women by appearing before them on lake shores or river banks, their glamour wrapping them in the guise of a lover, and at that moment he could almost believe it. The creature before him was too beautiful to be mortal. It had the face and form of Thomas Jopson, but not as Edward had last seen him: this Thomas was the picture of health, his cheeks as rosy as any girl’s, his eyes as bright as any sea. His glossy black hair was neatly trimmed, though one thick strand on the right side seemed as unruly as ever, prompting Jopson to brush it back even as Edward watched. His clothes were no longer those of a naval steward but of a smart London clerk, fashionable and well pressed, but like Edward he’d foregone a jacket in the afternoon heat, his sleeves rolled up to show his strong forearms, the buttons at his neck undone to give a tantalizing glimpse of a sternum flecked with dark hairs.

“Are you real?” The words left Edward’s mouth without thought, his mind unable to function. Thomas laughed softly.

“The last time I checked.”

Shaking his head as if to clear it of the last vestiges of dream, Edward sat up straighter, brushing a few blades of grass from his sleeves and trousers. “I-- How did you--"

“How did I know you were here? Crozier wrote to me. In reply to my letter. He told me he’d urged you to visit me, that he’d told you I’d asked about you, but that- well, _you being you_ \- you were unsure of the welcome you’d receive. If I were a prouder man I suppose I might have waited, but I found I couldn’t. So I took the train up this morning.” Jopson had been smiling as he spoke, but now the first note of doubt crept into his expression. Dropping his glance, he added: “Perhaps I did wrong--"

“You know you didn’t.” Edward’s eyes met Jopson’s and both men held the glance, exchanging words without speaking as they’d once done over the table in the mess, over Crozier’s head in the great cabin. Taking a deep, steadying breath, Edward ran his fingers through his hair, scattering a few more blades of grass in the process. “I thought I’d conjured you up from sheer want. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

Something inscrutable played across Jopson’s features. “Why didn’t you come to London?” His voice was tremulous; he cleared his throat at the end of his sentence as if trying to hide it. “Was my asking about you not enough of an invitation? That’s why I did it, you know. I hoped Crozier was in contact with you and might pass word along.”

Edward couldn’t bear the scrutiny of those eyes as he answered. He threaded his fingers through the grass. “I was afraid. Perhaps you were asking about me in the hope that I’d sailed to the far side of the world. Perhaps you were making sure you’d never have to see my face again.” He dared a glance and found Jopson watching him closely. “You might have written directly to me, if you’d wanted to see me.”

“I didn’t know where to write to. And, in truth, I was also afraid. Some of the things I said…” He cringed visibly.

“You were right to say them.”

“No. Not to you. I knew you too well to accuse you of being… well, any of the things I said. I see now that you were placed in an impossible situation. I was ill and frightened, but those horrible words… They still echo in my head at night. I was afraid they still echoed in yours.”

“I hear your voice in my head every night, Thomas. But those are never the words you’re saying.”

Jopson inhaled sharply. “I wouldn’t blame you if they were. I feared they might be.”

“Yet you kissed me.”

A deeper shade of red flooded into Jopson’s cheeks. “I hadn’t planned to. I thought— I hoped for a handshake. I knew I would be in ecstasies to accomplish just that much. But then I found you, laying there half-asleep, and it reminded me…” His bright eyes caught on Edward’s, then glanced as quickly away. “And then I saw this.”

For the first time, Edward noticed his sketchbook laying open in Jopson’s lap. Jopson lifted the book, turning it around so that Edward could see as he flipped through the pages. Filling every sheet around the drawing of Crozier’s pond were sketches of a single face, at different angles and in different variations of light: smiling, sleeping, looking pensive, resting on a hand, laying back against a pillow. “You’ve captured me well,” Jopson said softly, “though to be honest, you’ve flattered me, I think.”

Edward shook his head. “I haven’t done you justice, no matter how hard I’ve tried. There are at least a dozen more books at home, filled with my feeble attempts.”

Jopson turned the book back around to face him, laying it open again on his lap. His fingers traced the outline of his own image, one of dozens on a single page. “How can you capture my likeness so exactly without me seated before you? Without so much as a daguerreotype to reference?”

Edward laughed. “I need no reference. My mind is filled with you, Thomas. I close my eyes and I see you as clearly as I do right now.” He watched Jopson’s hands go still on the page, watched his lip tremble as he kept his eyes fixed resolutely on the paper. “Crozier told me you’ve a good job, as a clerk, and rooms in Hackney. Are you happy in your new life, Thomas?”

Smiling brightly to cover his emotion, dimples chiseled deeply in his cheeks, Jopson looked up and nodded. “I’m happy to have such a job, one that makes me feel useful. I’m happy with my rooms in Hackney: they’re small, but neat and quiet. I’m happy to be near my father and brother again, able to visit them, able to afford to help them.” He laughed softly. “And I’m happy to go barefoot to bed and not feel like I’ll lose my toes to frostbite before morning. I’m happy to be alive.” He paused and the smile faded. “But am I happy? You know I’m not.”

Before Edward could reply, Jopson closed the sketchbook, laid it aside, and turned to him, speaking rapidly as if to push the words out before his mind could catch up and censor them. “Do you still feel the same for me, Edward? _Could you_ feel the same? Tell me, and if you cannot, if you do not, then that kiss a moment ago will be our goodbye and I will never trouble you again. But if you do--"

Edward didn’t let him finish. Surging forward, he pressed his mouth to Jopson’s, finding it instantly open and responsive. Pulling Jopson into his arms, Edward delved deep, his tongue sliding over still-familiar territory, the sweet taste of his former lover’s mouth flooding his body with the same excitement, the same heat, as if no time and no anger had intervened between them. Jopson whimpered and clung to Edward, wrapping his arms around his body and curling his fingers into the fabric of his shirt. 

When they broke apart at last to breathe, Jopson was smiling against Edward’s lips. “Is that a yes?” he teased.

“I never dared to hope.” Edward lifted his hands to caress Thomas’s face as he spoke. A part of him still feared that he was hallucinating, that Jopson would vanish momentarily from his eyes and his arms, slipping away like smoke. “Never once, not even for a moment. But when Crozier told me you’d asked about me-- The hope I felt at that moment was like a knife being plunged into my chest. A pain worse than anything I endured on that damned island. Because what if I were wrong? What if that hope was misplaced? I couldn’t survive going to find you and seeing nothing but hatred in your eyes--"

“I could never hate you, Edward,” Thomas whispered, and his tears were flowing unchecked now, trailing down his cheeks and over Edward’s fingers. “How could I, when all my heart and soul belong to you and always will?”

Edward drew the other man to him again, kissing him deeply, slowly, knowing with the clarity of revelation that they had time now, so much time: the rest of their lives together. Jopson pushed against him and they tumbled to the grass, heedless of their surroundings, of anything beyond the union of their mouths and bodies, the grasp of their trembling hands. Jopson lay atop him, murmuring his name while pressing kisses to his face and throat, until with a growl of need Edward rolled over, pinning Jopson beneath him, claiming his mouth with a hunger borne of deprivation.

Time fell away and they were again as they had been on _Terror_. It might have been the cold floor of the captain’s storeroom beneath them rather than grass, or the hard slab of the mess table. There was familiarity in the way Jopson’s body accommodated Edward’s, in the perfect way their lips slotted together. Every little gasp and whimper Jopson made recalled an echoing sound in Edward’s memory, and his body reacted to the stimuli in the way it had then, dizzying in its intensity. He began to plan the night to come: how he would take Thomas upstairs to the bedroom Crozier had given him, bold and unashamed, and there before the fire burning low in the grate, he’d undress the man he loved fully for the first time. He would proceed slowly, lingering over every button, christening each new patch of exposed skin with a worshipful mouth. When every item of clothing lay upon the rug, Edward would pause to drink up the sight of his Thomas, memorizing every line of muscle, every finely sculpted bone, before covering every inch of him with kisses. And once he knew every curve and plane and hollow, he’d forget all he’d learned and begin again.

But there were still so many hours until the night, and Jopson’s eyes were burning with a liquid fire Edward remembered too well. He shifted, feeling the other man’s excitement, his own invigorated by the pressure. Jopson leaned up to bite softly into his bottom lip.

“When I found you just now, with your eyes closed as if sleeping,” he whispered, “I thought of every time I came to your cabin. Every night we spent pressed together in your bunk. I lay awake some of those nights, Edward, just to feel you breathe against me. You have no idea how many times I’ve wished I could trade all the comforts I now have to be back on _Terror_ , to lay wrapped in your warmth.” His gaze was pleading as he slid his hands between their bodies, tugging at the buttons of Edward’s shirt with one hand while the other traveled south to palm at Edward’s arousal. “I can’t bear a single second more without you.”

His words went to Edward’s head like full proof rum. “Do you think Crozier will come looking for us?” he panted, nipping at the edge of Jopson’s collarbone. His free hand had followed the other man’s example, slipping between Jopson’s thighs and moving up to caress the bulge tenting his fine trousers.

“I doubt that very much. Fitzjames arrived just after I did.” Jopson’s eyes sparkled. “I’m sure they have more pressing matters to attend to.”

“I can’t imagine what those might be,” Edward deadpanned, rubbing with the heel of his hand and tearing a ragged gasp from Jopson’s throat.

“Whatever they are, I’m sure our former captains will not rush in the satisfaction of them.” Jopson murmured these words against Edward’s mouth, begging for another kiss with his soft swollen lips while his hand found its way inside Edward’s drawers to fondle his erection.

“That’s good.” Edward could barely suppress a cry that might have carried to the distant house. “We have a lot of catching up to do.”

Trousers and drawers were pushed down just enough to allow them to press their rigid members together, that first touch causing them both to cry out incoherently. Groins flush and manhoods in tandem, they started to move, the friction building precipitously. With a groan of frustration, Jopson gripped Edward’s shirt with his free hand and tugged it up over his head, trailing his fingers down his naked side. Edward soon returned the favor, pausing in his movements to lower his head and claim a hard nipple with his mouth. No chill came to dance over their bare flesh now, no draft crept forward to cut an icy gash across their pleasure. There was only heat - delicious, searing heat - falling from the sun above them, rising from their bodies and soaking back into their skin. It seemed they could never be cold again.

After so long a separation - a separation filled with fantasies of just such a reunion - Edward could not hold out long. Nuzzling his face into the angle of Jopson’s neck, lungs filling with his lover’s sweet familiar scent, he lost himself with a desperate, keening moan. The wild shuddering of his body pushed Jopson to the edge, and arching his back, Jopson cried out Edward’s name as he succumbed. Bringing his hand up from between their bodies where his fingers had interlaced with Edward’s around their arousals, Jopson clenched at Edward’s shoulders, pulling him down hard, their chests sealing together with sweat and seed and a mutual refusal to be parted.

The pond was there for washing, but that could wait. They lay entwined upon the grass, kissing lazily once they’d regained the breath to do so, fingers slipping through hair, tracing the lines of brows and jawbones. Edward could feel the echo of Jopson’s heartbeat in his sternum. He’d felt that rhythm before, thumping hard against his chest or back or hand; he knew it as well as a pianist knew their own composition, and he realized that the absence of it for so many months had been like the loss of a limb, a missing piece of his own body. Now he was whole.

“You mentioned home when you spoke of your sketchbooks,” Jopson murmured, drawing patterns with his fingertip against Edward’s cheek. “Where is home?”

Edward smiled. He had been living with his sisters since he’d returned, but though he loved them all dearly, it wasn’t home. “It’s a set of rooms in Hackney, if the current occupant will have me.”

Jopson’s eyes welled with tears even as he beamed the brightest smile Edward could ever remember having seen. “That would make him blissfully happy.”

It seemed a poor return for Crozier’s hospitality, to wish themselves away so soon. But Edward’s mind was filled now with images of suppers shared by lamplight at a table so small their knees touched beneath it, and nights spent in a bed with a squeaky frame and a headboard that knocked against a papered wall. There would be a mantlepiece where the medals the queen had given them might be placed, and beneath it a hearth to sit by in the evenings while they talked. They would stir the fire when it burned low and shelter in one another’s embrace, want and cold and separation forever banished to a place from which they could not return.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to tulliver for sharing the headcanon that inspired this fic and for allowing me to borrow it. :)


End file.
